Rob Birza is not an artist of style, but of tension. In each of his series, the starting point is a tension; one of decoration versus art, beauty versus ugliness or to what point something is acceptable. The ceramic sculpture shown in the exhibition, from the early 2000s, is from a series of models of fantastic worlds; the series includes a dystopian water park, a Greek death temple, and in the present case, scantily clad women climbing a giant rock shaped like a peanut. Another of Birza's works included is an adapted painting from a thrift store in the late 1980s. Modifying a found painting of a scene with dogs and birds by superimposing an abstract pattern over it, this may very well be considered one of Birza’s very first taunts of art history and its many conventions.

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